I commend to you this new service organization of the LCMS. From their website:
The primary purpose of this organization shall be to provide ongoing spiritual care opportunities for Lutheran pastors. Participants will be refreshed and equipped as a result of their participation in a program of soul care grounded in Holy Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions. The Center provides a safe environment for clergy to reflect on their own spiritual health and offers a program carefully crafted to help them review and enhance their professional competencies and skills. Doxology strengthens pastors so they can more faithfully pastor others.
I have been given the opportunity to do some media production for them. I look forward to the opportunity. This field is one that I hope to develop more thoroughly on my vicarage. I had only limited opportunities in my fieldwork congregation. The cure of souls definitely is an art learned in the school of experience by the gracious inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Many have written about pastoral counseling. We run the danger of approaching it as a psychiatric science rather than using the knife of the Law and the balm of the Gospel. The balanced approach of Doxology uses the modern diagnostic tools but never contradicts the reality of the Biblical confession of the sinful condition of man.
St. Augustine has a wonderful illustration of some principles used for this cure of souls.
From On Christine Teaching, Book One, paragraph 27:
The way to health is through medical care; God's care has taken it upon itself to heal and restore sinners by the same methods. When doctors bind wounds, they do this not just anyhow, but in an appropriate manner, so that the effectiveness of the dressing is matched by a kind of beauty; similarly the treatment given by wisdom was adapted to our wounds by its acceptance of human nature, healing sometimes by the principle of contrariety, sometimes by that of similarity. A doctor treating a physical wound applies some medications that are contrary - a could one to a hot wound, a dry one to a wet wound, and so on - and also some that are similar, such as a round bandage to a round wound and a rectangular bandage to a rectangular wound, and he does not apply the same dressing to all wounds, but matches like with like. So for the treatment of human beings God's wisdom - in itself both doctor and medicine - offered itself in a similar way. Because human beings fell through pride it used humility in healing them. We were deceived by the wisdom of the serpent; we are freed by the foolishness of God. But just as that was called wisdom yet was foolishness to those who despised God, so this so-called foolishness is wisdom to those who overcome the devil. We made bad use of immortality, and so we died; Christ made good use of mortality, and so we live. The disease entered through the corrupted female mind; healing emerged from an intact female body. Also relevant to the principle of contrariety is the fact that our vices too are treated by the example of his virtues. Examples of similarity in the kinds of bandages (as it were) applied to our limbs and wounds are these: it was one born of a woman that freed those deceived by a woman; it was a mortal man that freed mortals; and it was by death that he freed the dead.
Ah, too speak with the tongue of Augustine! There is no perfect bandage for every pastoral care situation. Skillful application of the proper bandage or treatment requires the wisdom of God. The cure is not always intuitive. Sometimes the proper remedy is the opposite of expectation. Who would expect that a conscience burdened by guilt may need to fall yet deeper it to total despair by the work of the Law before the Gospel can do its work in all its sweetness? It defies human wisdom but is the wisdom of God.
